wfn.org | New United Methodist foundation names executive director

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Jan. 25, 2000  News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{033}

By United Methodist News Service*

Byrd L. Bonner of San Antonio, Texas, has been named the first executive
director of the United Methodist Church Foundation, effective Feb. 1.  
	
Bonner said he was excited and honored by the appointment. "The
opportunities that will open to the United Methodist Church through this
foundation will be limitless," he said.

Governing members of the denomination's General Council on Finance and
Administration (GCFA) voted in December 1998 to establish the foundation,
upon the recommendation of a study team that had worked nearly a year on the
idea. The foundation's directors, elected by the GCFA board, met for the
first time last July. 
They affirmed that in addition to being an investment body for financial
gifts to the church's general funds, the foundation would encourage
stewardship, promote stewardship education and advance the mission supported
by those funds.
	
Bonner is a lay leader of the Southwest Texas Annual Conference and Travis
Park United (regional) Methodist Church in San Antonio, and he has provided
leadership in the South Central Jurisdiction and for the denomination. First
elected as a jurisdictional conference reserve delegate in 1992, he has
served on the jurisdiction's episcopacy and nominations committees and on
its Council on Ministries. He was elected a delegate to both the 1996 and
2000 General Conferences and South Central Jurisdiction Conferences.

Since 1992, he has been a voting member of the United Methodist Commission
on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns and has served on multiple
committees of that agency, including chairing its finance committee during
the 1996-2000 quadrennium. 
Bonner also served during the current quadrennium on both the Pan-Methodist
Cooperation and Pan-Methodist Union commissions.   

A practicing attorney since 1983, he received his jurisprudence degree at
Southern Methodist University, after earning his bachelor's degree from
Vanderbilt University.
# # #
*This report is based on a press release by Steve Zekoff, assistant general
secretary with the General Council on Finance and Administration in
Evanston, Ill.

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United Methodist News Service
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